Shine
by Marbletoast
Summary: A short story unaffiliated with or connected to the rest of my writings, but still ponies. Of course.


Shine  
  
There was nothing in the water but himself, quivering a little with the wind, but that was not only his reflection. Even the breeze that shivered across the water could not chill him down to where he trembled hardest. In that lonely spot, somewhere behind his heart, between his soul and his teeth, he was as cold as a corpse.  
  
"I am not beautiful, as they were," he told his own quivering face. "Once they were like the stars, but became more like the moon later. Or perhaps it was only silver, but all the same, they shone brighter than me. It is because I am all there is left."  
  
As accustomed as he was to listening to himself speak only to the reflection in the water, his voice was lead in the night air, hurting him where it fell. With another breath of dusk, his face disappeared into a mosaic of moonlight and aspen gold, and from it he turned and lit his golden fire across the field so deep a blue in the faded starlight.  
  
He did not cease his sprint until the cool of the forest shade blanketed him in its lonely comfort and he could rest without the eyes of the moon on his back. "Why did they leave me here, where all I loved was them?" He asked the shadows. Those ghostly apparitions of silver-blue light through the trees were not altogether unlike those he sought, taunting him with impalpable closeness. He could leap through shadows until he became one and he would never know their texture.  
  
But he could never be like shadow, nor was he a part of the night. Broken from the sun and hammered into silky golden form, he moved like sunlight across wet stones and sounded like the falling of rain. He gave himself no name but to call himself by their memory. He was himself, the last he remembered, and the only one left to keep looking.  
  
When it came, morning lingered long on his back, enjoying him more than the night, fragmenting his sleep until he woke in its pieces scattered on the forest floor. With the new sunlight for a companion, he shook the sleep and the dirt from his body, cracked his brazen tail like a whip over his flanks, and took to running. It made him feel closer to that which he sought, as if chasing the impossible sunlight brought him nearer to catching the impossible dream. He tumbled with the morning over the water and the stones. Through the trees he led the light and across the meadows he raced it until the world was burning from his golden hooves.  
  
When he shouldered himself to a stop, perhaps to let the morning rest and become daylight, there was a stillness in the air that tickled him. His forest was quiet with only the trees forever inching taller and his water was quiet but for the secrets it murmured to the earth, but this quiet ate at his bones until his ears twitched in his effort to find what was creating the silence he could hear.  
  
It was a pool he found by looking, still as the air and deep as sorrow. He was not waiting in the water, as he always had been before. Instead, there were ripples far down below the surface, glinting almost like fish catching the sun, sparking like lightning. "What are you, pool?"  
  
The water gave no answer and only flickered under his breath.  
  
"I am not in you, as I am in any other water...so perhaps they are. Are you hiding them?"  
  
There was a stiff current rippling his mane, but the water did not move.  
  
"Is that why I cannot find myself?" The water did not object to one shining hoof, but that hoof could find no bottom to rest on, so he withdrew it, dripping, and peered closer. "If this is where they went, where did they go from here?"  
  
"Shall I find out?" It was the white sky he asked, but only the breeze answered him with its laughter. So he gazed down again, believed it could be nothing worse than being alone, and dove foreword.  
  
Colder than he had hoped, the water blistered his eyes when he fell, but almost as quickly he was no longer floating. He was touching nothing though he could see his own legs pawing the shimmer he fell through. It was flashing in so many colors he almost choked and there was no sound, even from his heart and his breath. Once time faded away, he guessed he must have leapt into death. Death, he thought, will not be lonely.  
  
But solid, dusty earth met his hopes and dashed them inside his skull. All his thoughts were loosed and rattled around his eyes as he landed and rolled, having somehow gone from the pool to a fairly steep incline. His golden body tumbled, bumped and blundered down the hill until he spilled out at the bottom, a loose pile of dirty golden yellow.  
  
There was nothing but the ringing between his temples for a long while.  
  
"Are you all right?"  
  
It had been so long since a voice had touched him, he flinched at the sound. Yet the foreign feeling of being spoken to pulled his amber eyes upward until he found the blurry, dark shape of the speaker silhouetted against a candy blue sky.  
  
"Can you hear me?"  
  
He tucked his legs back under him, gathered himself and rose, blinking in the sunlight, his golden skin twitching under the dust.  
  
"I said, are you all right?"  
  
Now that he was level with the speaker, he tumbled back into a limp pile in surprise. "Yes...keep talking..." his rainy voice pleaded. "It has been so long since I've heard you..."  
  
"You've never heard me before...least ways, I've never seen you before. You fell harder than I thought, I think..."  
  
He was staring up at her in bewilderment, but then, even as he watched her crouch down on her front knees to help him, he knew she was not what he had thought. There were similarities, enough to have fooled him, but she was not one of them.  
  
Once Sundance had the bruised and grubby pony on his feet, he seemed to steady himself. She stepped back and watched him, ready to catch him if he fell again. This time, though, he was on his feet for good. And he was staring at her so fixedly she fidgeted.  
  
"Are you okay now?"  
  
His golden eyes blinked. "I am not hurt..."  
  
"Who are you? And how did you fall? Here—come back with me, to the castle. We'll take care of you." She was by his side again, leading him with her shoulder for he still walked shakily. "I fell through the pool, and I fell into nothing, and then I fell here, onto your hill. I was looking for them, and found you." He stopped, his face brightening with revelation. "Do you know where they are?"  
  
"Who are you looking for? I haven't seen anyone else come through here."  
  
He shook his head and kept walking, sure now that this was not what he had been searching for.  
  
"My name is Sundance," she said quickly as the silence hung between them. "Who're you?"  
  
"I—" He did not answer. Instead he stopped again, this time slowly, his eyes widening in wonder. Before them was a wide grassy field mottled with Sundance's kind. They were everywhere, in so many ways like himself, he noticed, but not one of them resembled him enough. As he stared in wonder, several advanced. Sundance smiled at them.  
  
"He fell down the hill, but I don't think he's hurt. I brought him back, but—I don't know who he is."  
  
One of them smiled warmly at him. "Hello. Welcome to Dream Castle." When he did not respond, she continued. "I'm Powder...perhaps you need rest. Are you hurt?"  
  
"No, I am not hurt. I do not need rest." He gazed around him at the crowd that gathered. "Where is this place?"  
  
"Dream Castle, in Dream Valley. But you—where are you from? There are no ponies like you here."  
  
"He must have come from across the mountains!" Another volunteered, coming up beside Powder.  
  
Yet another stepped up to him, voiced her opinion, and soon he had a dozen different origins. Perhaps forgetting her original question, Powder was suddenly ushering him toward the castle. "You must meet Majesty, or at least a member of the court. All visitors must—please don't take offense. We love guests, but this is not a time when anyone was expected. Come quickly!" She was trotting now, and he followed, his gait longer and smoother than hers.  
  
It did not take them long to reach the cool inner courtyard and leave much of the curious mob behind. There were a few ponies scattered through the lush greenery of the garden, and several lounging by the fountain, but they just smiled at Powder and her companion and did not intrude.  
  
Powder's curiosity went unquenched as her questions fell on distracted ears. Every noise leapt out at him, and every voice clawed at his skin. They were harsh and grating, but not so unpleasant he could not listen. It was good to hear voices again, even if they were not their voices.  
  
"Have you seen them?" He asked Powder suddenly, blindly cutting short another question.  
  
"Um...who? Do you have friends here?" Powder wondered if she had missed part of a conversation.  
  
"I do not know where they've gone. Perhaps here, perhaps another place. You would know if you had seen them." He said nothing more for some time and Powder let him be, intrigued but estranged by his speech.  
  
The halls they passed through fascinated him, drawing his eyes ever upward, over and down as he peered at the golden accents on the rosy marble. The windows were high and long and the floor was tiled in pearl and opal that shimmered gold as he passed. The hall was wide enough for the passage of many and well lit by both sunlight and the flashing glow of torches. These were burning low but still cast enough light to make the shadows dance across gilded furniture and statuettes. He had never seen anything like it, and nothing meant anything to him but the shine. He loved the gold immensely, the way it swallowed sunlight and held it tightly, letting it soak slowly back out into the hall and glow with a strange intensity. Metal was foreign to him, and so he could only fathom that they had forged the morning into stone. Before his voice made anything of it, Powder stepped aside and bowed him through a large archway. The room beyond was brighter, almost painfully so at first, than the hall. The entire ceiling was a crystal dome held aloft by pillars carved like silver and emerald vines speckled in jeweled flowers. They bloomed around the dome and fell back down to the floor in cascades of glinting bronze, ruby and sapphire. Smooth polished abalone washed out under their feet and flooded the round room. Windows framed by stone and silver let light play across the patterns cast by the dome so the entire room seemed, at first glance, submerged into an ocean of light.  
  
"This is the throne room," Powder explained, stepping quietly up beside him. She ducked her head again, and glanced at him, obviously expecting him to do the same.  
  
But his eyes had already met the pale blue ones that sought him. She was very old, and her eyes told him so. She did not rise from the cushioned throne with her delicate white legs tucked under her like a fawn's. She was as close as he had seen to those he sought.  
  
"Welcome," she said, not in a weak voice but a gentle voice like silk. "Who is our guest, Powder?"  
  
"I don't know his name, Majesty. Perhaps he wished to tell you. I know not whence he came, or why, but Sundance found him. He...fell down the hill..." Powder blinked and stared at him, hoping for further explanation for her queen.  
  
"Indeed?" Majesty turned her gaze back to him. "Are you all right?"  
  
"I am."  
  
"So what is your name then, guest?"  
  
He blinked and pawed slowly at the silvery tile. "I am the last. I have come to find them."  
  
"That last of whom?" Majesty did not question with jest or confusion, but carried her words on a breath of wonder.  
  
But he was silent, and never lowered his eyes.  
  
"You do not have a name, do you?" When again he would neither speak nor turn away, she addressed Powder. "Give him rest and company, then. Take care of him. You are welcome here, friend, for as long as you like, as our guest. And I pray you find here whatever it is you are looking for. Peace follow you."  
  
With her final benediction, Powder led him away.  
  
Once they stood outside the archway again, and a little past so their voices would not carry into the room, Powder turned so sharply to him her horn nearly bumped his muzzle. "Please, I don't mean to be rude," she said, though she did, "but when standing before the queen it is respectful to at least incline your head."  
  
He nodded, as if storing it away for another time, and waited for her to continue. For a moment, she looked almost ready to say something else, but there was a hovering innocence in his face that betrayed not negligence but ignorance of the purest, humblest kind. Powder swallowed her chastisement and continued foreword, accepting his naiveté with only a small amount of grudge.  
  
After passing again through the iridescent hallways, the courtyard blossomed above them and the walls fell away at all sides, exposing true sunlight and the prickly feeling of the nearing twilight. "It will be dark soon, so I will find someone to show you a room and to make you comfortable. I have business to handle, or I would show you myself," she assured him, all the while scanning the now almost empty yard. Her violet eyes fell on a lavender pegasus who hovered near the fountain, apparently admiring her own image in the still water. Her dainty face would cock left and then right again, sending her wispy blue mane twirling all around her face as she twitched and bobbed in the air, blinking in shameless fascination at her own face.  
  
"Sprinkles!" Powder called to her, averting the little pony's attention. "Come here, I have something for you to do."  
  
With a regretful glance to her reflection, the delicate mare fluttered to the ground and trotted to Powder's side, staring as fixedly now at their guest as she had at the water. "Hello," she cooed, sounding no more sincere than a bubble.  
  
"This is—this is our guest," Powder told her. "He needs somewhere to stay, and to, perhaps, be made comfortable before this evening." She glanced over the grubby stallion. "Would you mind showing him around? He's probably hungry."  
  
"Ah, but of course," Sprinkles said with a popping giggle. "I'll show him the kitchen. Come, follow me, sir. What was your name? Did I miss it? Did you say it?" She was hovering again, her wings stirring his hair in tiny whirlwinds.  
  
"He has no name," Powder answered for him.  
  
This seemed to satisfy Sprinkles' capricious curiosity and together the pony like floating down and her shadow like rusty gold trailed away from Powder. "It is strange, how he walks..." she mused. "But perhaps that's only me being silly. Could anyone really be so? So like those stories?" She blinked away her daydream and they were gone, into the castle.  
  
Sprinkles said nothing to him that lasted longer than a butterfly's breath, but he did not mind. He listened to her murmur songs to herself and caught her eye now and again. They were shallow and blue and pale as water, but they were not unlovely. She took him to the kitchen where almost immediately a stout pony the color of butter greeted them at the door, barricading the way with a forced grin.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Lemondrop, I've brought a guest, and he's hungry!" Sprinkles finally alighted for what seemed the final time and rustled her wings against her back.  
  
Lemondrop nodded at him. She lost her smile, but something else welled up behind her eyes. "The food will be ready, soon, you understand. It's hard in here. Here, Sparkler, come here." Now a blue unicorn, much taller and more handsomely shaped than Lemondrop, was before them. Her eyes did not soak up the same color when she saw him, but she smiled all the same. "Take care of him 'till the meal's ready. Give me an hour. A little more if you don't take Bubbles with you."  
  
"What shall we do?" Sprinkles trilled, evidently startling Sparkler.  
  
"I don't know. Name again?"  
  
"He hasn't one." Sprinkles' grin nearly broke Sparkler's nerve.  
  
"No name, then. Well, sir, you're looking a mite dusty..." She eyed the silent onlooker with a curious stare.  
  
"Of course! Why did I never think of it before! How lovely a long soak would feel, yes, my friend? You've traveled far, obviously. Come."  
  
A bath was decided on almost immediately, and Lemondrop and her kitchen crew promised a fine meal when they returned. And so the three ponies—Sprinkles, Bubbles, and Sparkler—led the befuddled guest outside to a small waterfall that plunged from the heights of the castle wall, birthed from some artificial pool. Bubbles followed only out of curiosity, for already he guessed there was something to see. Sparkler, loud and a touch abrasive, gave the dirty, rumpled visitor no choice but to immerse himself entirely in the shallow pool at the base of the tumbling, glittering water. He seemed more than a trifle alarmed, and when Sprinkles insisted he stand directly under the stream of water to remove the grime from his fall he nearly leapt back out of the pool. It was lucky Bubbles was there at all; he reassured the distressed stallion that they intended him no harm, and would in fact stay on the bank. And so cautiously, and not without several imploring glances over his shoulder, he waded into the foam and ducked under the falling water until he heard Sprinkles' voice call him back. Without delay he sprang out of the pool and landed beside them, confused about the whole process but glad it was over.  
  
When he stepped out of the foamy water and quivered once all over, they saw a coat like molten gold. His high crested neck bore a mane that reached nearly past his chest with a heavy forelock lying limp with water between his eyes and his tail followed behind him like a river of sunlight. The locks were colored like bronze with strands of copper and brass, but there was no symbol to be seen. From his muzzle to his hocks he was as gold as opportunity, only gleaming more now with the water when he stood in the sun. When he danced a little in place, they could almost feel the hammering of his hooves over the earth as he dreamed of running with the sunshine.  
  
"Where are you from?" Sprinkles asked him, freezing him, bringing his fire- lit eyes upon them. The question had been asked before, but now they felt the full weight of the words. He was not a part of them or their world or their kind. They didn't need his glossy flanks to tell them that.  
  
Again, as before, he did not answer, but stared past them toward the castle. "I have come to find them."  
  
"Perhaps," came the unexpected reply, "you are looking too hard."  
  
The voice was behind him and forced his head around. She was opal blue and delicate as snowflakes. Eyes like watery amethyst widened when he turned to her, but she did not say another word.  
  
"What do you mean, Rain?" Sparkler asked her, moving defensively in front of their guest.  
  
But Rain only smiled. "He will know. Give him time here, and he will know. Take care," she said to the soaking stallion, "that you seek only for what you will find, and not for what you hope to find. Either way, you may find heartbreak, but let it be as gentle as possible."  
  
He did not answer, and she let them return the way they had come without speaking again. ~ Days passed, and he learned so many things he hardly dared wake up every morning for fear of learning so much he would forgot what he had come for. The ponies treated him kindly, but he did not at once fall into life in the valley, though it was pleasant. Having so much constant company made him continually nervous for many days, and he spent much of the twilight running after the departing sunlight.  
  
Though friendly, the ponies did not take to him immediately, either. Many knew quickly he was not like them, and many only wondered at him. There were a few, however, that befriended him. Glory fast became his closet companion. The white unicorn spoke softly and meekly, following the golden visitor in a sort of fascinated awe. It was Glory who eventually named him, while before the guest was known by no more than the look in the eyes of whoever spoke of him.  
  
Glory found him one morning awake before the sun and watching the horizon with intense anxiety. The unicorn paused before addressing him, tilting his head as was his custom when pondering. Though Glory seemed simple to many, he was merely thinking differently—perhaps slowly, but his thoughts ran like water. Slower when they were deeper.  
  
He stood watching his friend face the horizon utterly motionless until the darkness was pierced by a ray of light. This excited him, and Glory saw his skin quiver all over as the night slowly bled out of the sky. At last, when it seemed he would have burst, the brow of the sun broke over the earth and with a cry that asked in deepest sympathy 'why did you go?' he rose to meet its effulgence. In that moment, the sun washed over his gilded coat and made him shine with a ferocity that almost blinded Glory, and very nearly broke his heart. To Glory, he seemed no more than a piece of the morning when he fell into the coming light and thundered toward the gleaming horizon. Radiant, burning—shining—brilliant as any heaven's light. Glory called him Shine thenceforth, and no one ever changed it, and Shine himself never questioned but took the name to be a part of his existence in the valley.  
  
Besides Glory, the mare Rain spoke directly to him and did not avoid his eyes with a bashful blush as the others did. In fact, her own eyes would rise to meet his and cooled the fire that burned there until Shine dreamed of those eyes, and they troubled him. They were very like something he remembered, but they would not place themselves.  
  
There were others, too, with eyes that would briefly take him far away and made his heart bleed. It would be only for a moment, but they were there, shining. A heavy built stallion, solid as roots with twisted, gnarled hair and eyes colored like bark. The thin mare who moved like starlight through lace with colorless eyes that gleamed like jewels. A winged stallion, small but powerful, gray as winter with eyes like purple satin. The unicorn with flames behind his eyes. These were they that haunted his dreams, though he knew them to be not unlike all the others. Across each of their flanks were the markings that pulled them away from him, and in their talk was not the speech he longed for. And they did not know him, and this troubled his dreams the most. ~ Days slowly bled themselves into months and those days stretched themselves longer and thinner until summer was rolling across the valley and filling up even the shadows with its heat. What Shine had taken for a sojourn was fixing itself in that place. Every morning he would stand before the sun and wonder if now—if maybe now—was the time to leave. It never was, and so he stayed, right up until the stony walls of the castle and the courtyard began bursting their seams with guests. The Summertide Celebration had begun and had taken Shine completely by surprise.  
  
At first, there was only a steady trickle of guest who came to stay, as if someone had popped a hole in a water-sack and didn't notice the leak. But soon that hole began breaching the seams and so many ponies—every size, shape, color—were flooding the grounds. There were voices and bodies in every crevice and he could not escape, and so he mingled, like one of them, watching them.  
  
And he looked for them.  
  
Still he saw only ponies, only his hosts, not his friends. Sometimes, like a light over the ocean, he would find one of those eyes in the crowd, but like everything else it would fade quickly back and he was left floundering in the dark again.  
  
Finally the morning came when only the stray stragglers, those that had dallied on the road, joined the company. No voice ever said, but every ear heard that it was finally time to begin the Summertide Celebration. The feasting began in earnest; the music and the dancing followed swiftly, flowering around the remaining daylight and carrying Shine away. Raconteurs spun their tales like thread on a loom, weaving the color to life and making it shimmer before his eyes. Dancers nearly shook the earth and seemed ready to tear down the sky. All around was the singing and laughing, the lights and the colors, the music, the noise, the wonder. The eyes.  
  
In the stillness of a breath, lightning shocked his heart and boiled his blood. His eyes were as wide as the sky, seeing now as if the sun were burning from them. Of the revelry he heard and saw no more. Now he knew what he was looking for. No more were they elusive shadows. Now he could see them; now he had found them.  
  
He approached the first eyes that lashed out at him and grabbed his heart. "I know you," he said suddenly to Timber who only peered at him with eyes that grew darker by the moment.  
  
"Of course. It has been six seasons since you arrived. I imagine you know most of us."  
  
Shine pondered the six months briefly. "You and the others. But why do you not know me?"  
  
"The others? Of course we know you, Shine. It seems as if you've come to stay." Timber looked perplexed and his words did not comfort Shine.  
  
"Star, and Zephyr, Flame and Rain. There are others, too, who haunt my dreams. I see them pass and they do not look at me, no, they do not even notice me. I see them though, and I am just now seeing what you have become..." Staring into Timber's shadowy eyes, Shine felt his heart leap and cry out in agony.  
  
"I have finally found you, and you do not know me!"  
  
Timber could not have responded if he had known what to say, for Shine had flown in fear from those eyes to seek solace in the setting sun.  
  
The earth shuddered under his hooves as he ran, ran as he had never run before. This was not his race to catch up to what he sought, but now a desperate retreat from what he found. They were there, all around him, hiding themselves in those bodies that did not belong to their souls. Though they could hide their bodies, they could not hide their eyes, and that had betrayed them. But the fools!  
  
Shine nearly stumbled from despair.  
  
They had deceived themselves!  
  
Rain's eyes halted him, abruptly, painfully. She was waiting under the brilliant glare of the sun's last efforts. Snorting—indeed, raging—he stalked up to her, his coat glistening not in radiance but in lather, his eyes burning not in reverie but in rage. "Look what you have made yourselves!"  
  
Rain only looked at him vaguely, her watery eyes changing shades in the coming dusk. "The sky is clouding—a storm is coming."  
  
"A storm!" Shine's voice rose to a desperate cry. "You have lost yourself! I have searched for you in the night and in the day, in the shadows and under the sun, but who would have guessed you hid in your own selves! I never dared—" He cut himself off, breathing so heavily Rain could see his ribs whenever he inhaled.  
  
"We do what we must."  
  
Those words, soft like dew on petals, caught him. He cut his breath in and glared at her, now perhaps seeing past even her eyes. "You did not have to leave me."  
  
"We did not leave you. It is only that you were the last to come. I do not know who left us first, or even what they are now. I barely remember it at all. But you are asking me now why we ever left. It was time—time for what? I see that question coming next." She looked to the sky and squinted at the gathering clouds. "We could not stay. It is simple. Of course, we did not know this all at once, that what we were was over and dying. You were last because, perhaps, you were the purest of us all. If we could, we would have regretted leaving you, but we did not know we left. And what is there to regret? We cannot return—no, we don't even want to. I can only tell you this now because I left only a while before you fell in after. Long enough—yes, you did not know at first, no matter how hard you were looking." She could not hide the bitter triumph that echoed in her voice.  
  
Shine said nothing for a long time and only cast his eyes over her, drinking her in, trying to understand or maybe only trying to see.  
  
"You are like them now."  
  
"More so every day." There was no trace of sorrow in her voice, though Shine searched desperately.  
  
"You want it that way?"  
  
"There is no other way. You will know soon now what would have happened. Then you will forget. That is how it is—you are in fear of change, you understand the change, and then you forget the change." She eyed him softly now.  
  
"And see, you are becoming like them as well."  
  
Shine had not noticed until then what she spoke of—across his flanks faint traces of orange and bronze became visible if he turned his hindquarters just so. In fact, under the fading sunlight and now that he was looking, he could almost detect an emblem of a rising sun, made of deep, shimmering fire colors against his golden hide which had lost much of its luster since his days in the valley began.  
  
"It is all right," Rain told him. "We are all here now, and there is nothing left."  
  
"Why did you come here, if it was only to become a little less than what you were?" Shine's voice was fading with his glow, crumbling away from the silky silver sound of before and becoming deep with sorrow.  
  
"Our world was breaking, and we were no more. It is less than we were, but more than we could have been had we stayed."  
  
Around them, the air had grown thicker and the storm Rain had predicted gathered anger over them. In moments, the first soft showers began and their once glorious colors became a little like they once were with the sunlight through the drops. But the sun was setting fast, hiding its face from them.  
  
"Why must the end to everything be tragic?"  
  
"There is never any end to anything, Shine. Our end was this beginning, and their end will fade as quickly into something else."  
  
Shine would not look at her, but turned toward the falling drops for comfort. They did their best to hide his tears. 


End file.
